The Queen, cups of tea, Winston Churchill, these are all things that people relate with Great Britain but how do the films Hot Fuzz and This is England similarly appeal to a British Audience? In this article I will tell you how…
The Directors of This is England and Hot Fuzz play a huge role in how a British audience is drawn in to watch their films. Edgar Wright, director of Hot Fuzz, has directed various well known British films and series's. One of Wrights most famous is the horror spoof Shaun of the Dead that has a cast made up of Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and various other stock actors. Pegg and Frost also play the lead roles in Hot Fuzz. This would help attract a British audience because Shaun of the Dead was very successful so the audience would believe that Wrights new film will be just as good as his older ones. On the other hand, Shane Meadows, director of This is England, incorporated his life into the film and many of the scenes in This is England relate back to Meadows childhood experiences. For that reason the film now is associated to a British audience more than it does with other countries so therefore helping Britain to be the target audience.
Meadows and Wright mutually use their own experiences in there film but Wright uses his own judgements based on his personality and childhood dreams so he thinks of himself as the target audiences whereas Meadows production contains social realism as the story is based on Meadows real life childhood experiences of the 80s.
Hot Fuzz uses a lot of stock actors who are also noticeable British actors including: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Jim Broadbent, Timothy Dalton, Bill Nighy, Steve Coogan and many more. By using these actors this means that Hot Fuzz will appeal more to a British audience than other countries because the actors are not as well known in the other countries. In contrast, This is England, at the time of filming, used a complete cast of unknown actors and even the main character Shaun, played by Thomas Turgoose, had not had any acting experience before he took part in the film. Meadows did this in order for the audience to focus more on the British stereotypes rather than the people themselves as it would be much more realistic if the audience has not heard of the actors before hand. Of course this appeals to a British audience and/or an audience interested in the British culture.
Hot Fuzz is set in two main different locations one being London and the other Sandford, Gloucestershire. London is the capital of England, and there are a lot of scenery in London that is very representative of the British audience in general. Sandford, although being a fictional village, is very well represented at the classic British countryside and it has an atmosphere, like London, that would draw in a British audience. The film This is England is set Nottinghamshire, Northern England during 1983 and I think the choice of not giving a specific name to the location in the film is up to Meadows and the writers. By not giving a location it makes the film more about the whole of England rather than just a exact part. By doing this the film can now contain multiple British stereotypes in order to target various British viewers.
Stereotypes play a big role in both of the films. Hot Fuzz takes the stereotypes of policemen and youths and then links them into the stereotypical city and countryside. For example the metropolitan police are portrayed as hardworking, good at their action packed job and then the Sandford police that are lazy, and bad at their job because they consume alcohol whilst they are on duty and let people of crimes. The youths that are seen in Hot Fuzz are represented as violent and up to no good. Linking to This is England, the main stereotypes are the skinheads which links into the story of how Shaun grew up and got into a skinhead gang. Focusing on stereotypes that relate to Britain makes This is England target a British Audience.
Both films contain humour in Hot Fuzz there are various different techniques to create humorous situations such as the contrast in different characters and slapstick comedy. Slapstick comedy is often seen in British comedies or sketches. By doing this the film tries to target a British audience as they would understand slapstick comedy more and therefore will find it funnier. Stereotypes also link into the humour aspect of Hot Fuzz for example it is funny how different the London police and Gloucestershire police are and also many people would stereotype the police and other characters in the film in a similar way. On the other hand, This is England incorporates humour in more of a ‘childish’ form than Hot Fuzz most likely the film is mainly about the life of a twelve year old school boy so in This is England there are jokes and parts of comedy that Shaun find funny – the humour is built within the film. Also in the film you can see that the older members of the skinhead group use some slapstick comedy (for example, when the skinheads hide from Gadget and scare him), like Hot Fuzz, so yet again this humour relates to British roots and attracts a British audience.
Camera work and editing is used extremely well in both of the films. Hot Fuzz’s camera work includes fast paced editing similar to the fast paced editing seen in action films including Bad Boys II. Although in Hot Fuzz it is not just action in these high speed edits there are parts of humour in there too. There are also close ups of the actors faces which adds to both the humour and drama of their facial expressions. This could link in with a British audience by saying that there are a lot of British comedians that use there facial expressions to created humour between the audience and themselves. For example, Peter Kay and Lee Evans. Both of the films contain montages Hot Fuzz’s montage being used to pass time in the film, the montage is used when Sergeant Angel moving to Sandford countryside. However, in This is England the montage is used to set the scene as the montage is used at the very beginning and it shows various 80s British stereotypes including Roland Rat, Margret Thatcher and the demolition of houses. Again there is another connection between the camera work used in This is England and Hot Fuzz: there are also close ups used in Meadows film. Similarly because the camera is close up to the characters face this adds dramatic effect and humour at times linking to the audiences feelings and letting them connect more to the characters feelings which is consequently easier for people of the same background to relate to, the British.
There are various different parts of iconography within Hot Fuzz that help the film appeal to a British audience. There are various different iconic features including the British police uniforms, Big Ben, red buses and many other features that are associated with Britain. Also we see Angel (Pegg) travelling on the underground which we obviously associate with London and Britain. Moreover, This is England also has various symbols that help influence a British audience to watch the film. For example the montage, that I have talked about before, used many different iconic British figures within. The montage is very influential on connecting to a British audience because people that were alive during the 80s can relate back to the experiences they had.
To conclude, both Hot Fuzz and This is England use various and excellent ways to appeal to a British target market but they do it in different ways. Where as the high budget Hot Fuzz mainly focuses of the humour aspect of the film This is England is more like a documentary about what the 1980s was like and because Meadows based This is England on his childhood experience is makes the film feel more real and therefore the audience connect more with the film. The unknown actors also help this because it gets the audience to focus more on the stereotypes of the characters more than actors themselves. Although the story lines are different in both of the films and there are different elements in both films the two help to appeal to a British audience mainly because of the aspect revolving around British history so many people that are intrigued about Britain would love to watch either of the films.
